Nominations for 13 Artists Awards open

THE Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) has announced that 2018 Thirteen Artists Awards is open for nominations until Jan. 31, 2018.

The Thirteen Artists Awards (TAA) began as a curatorial project of the CCP Museum under the directorship of its first curator Roberto Chabet (1937-2013). The first group of artists gathered under this program exhibited their works in 1970.

In a document on the event, Chabet made a critical connection between the Thirteen Artists and the Philippine Modernists. Both generations of artists were viewed to have sought in their time the chance and risk to “restructure, re-strengthen and renew art making and art thinking… that lend viability to Philippine art.”

Since then, the award would be given to deserving recipients without regularity or pattern, and always subject to constant revision. This partly explains the interesting texture of the roster.

It is in this context that the Thirteen Artists Awards is sustained to this day: to mark the turnings in and of Philippine contemporary art, to update its modernizing potential, and to assess how artists today engage with other forces in the art world.

In 2009, the CCP Thirteen Artists Awards was established as a triennial event. What has characterized the work of the awardees, then and now, is a fresh visual language, innovative solutions to artistic problems, and sustained creative output.

Guidelines for nominating and official nomination forms are available at the CCP Visual Arts and Museum Division office, 4th floor CCP Main Theater Bldg., or may be downloaded from the CCP Web site: www.culturalcenter.gov.ph. For details, contact the CCP Visual Arts and Museum Division at 832-1125 loc. 1504/1505 and 8323702, 0917-603-3809, or e-mail ccp.exhibits@gmail.com.

Nominations will be accepted until 6 p.m. on Jan. 31.